Here’s Winona Ryder at the Frankenweenie premiere last night and at the premiere last week in Texas (black dress white collar). I can’t tell you, and I know I have already, how happy I am that she’s working with Tim Burton again because in my mind that brings her closer to Johnny Depp and I feel like if he could just see her now, you know?, see how fragile and beautiful she (still) is (again), it would be like ...before. (Stop living in the past!) These are, I realise, impossible dreams.

As for Frankenweenie...first time I saw the first trailer (just the trailer!), I cried. When he says “I’m sorry, boy”, oh my God, it was over. If you have a pet, especially a dog, maybe you can relate? Blah blah blah special effects, movie for kids, whatever. The child has lost his best friend in the world, the most loyal friend a person could have, and brought him back unnaturally. HOW DO YOU THINK THIS WILL END? See? I am hysterical. If I see this movie they’ll have to carry me out.

OK so I have a story I’ve been saving to tell you about Winona at TIFF. She came into the etalk lounge for an interview. Then we invited her to take home some gifts. Some people take everything. That douchebag Adrian Grenier, for example, who walked out with ladies underwear and the Brazil butt workout. Some people take nothing but Grey Goose (Chris Evans). Winona was very sweet and appreciative and, of course, selected items that few others were into. Like these gorgeous old Hollywood/film prints that may have been difficult to travel with but carried way more sentimental value. So she’s going through the room, browsing through the items, and her bag is filling up, and - do you know where this is going...? - she’s lovely and modest and sort of surprised and unfamiliar with the whole gifting process, and then she says, out loud:

“Are you sure I can take all this? It’s free?”

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Everyone tried very hard not to make eye contact with anyone else. If you had walked in at that moment, you would have seen several people looking down at the ground, maybe taking deep breaths, except for Winona Ryder, that exquisite face brightened by excitement and gratitude.

Yes, we are all c-nts for thinking it, I agree. But how do you NOT think it? When words like that fill the air, words that come with a particular history, how do you stop your mind from the association?